The stars had turned out in full force. George Harrison and Ringo Starr rubbed shoulders with Stevie Wonder, Neil Diamond and Robbie Robertson. Bob Dylan, Carole King, Bernie Taupin and Led Zepplin's John Bonham mingled with Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty. The man hailed as the high priest of reggae, Jamaica's own Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger rolled into one, was in town, and the Hollywood celebrity register was there to see if Bob Marley really was as good as his reputation.
He was better than good, dreader than dread. At the Roxy, on May 26th, 1976, Bob Marley and his wailin' Wailers took Babylon by storm, lifting fans and VIPs alike out of their seats with an extraordinary set that left no doubt about either reggae's heady rhythmic charm or Marley's own intoxicating charisma. Opening with the slow, sassy kick of "Trench Town Rock," then slipping down into the dark, angry grooves of "Burnin' and Lootin'" and "Them Belly Full," he zapped the all-star crowd with his urgent reggae gospel of fierce Rastafarian pride, spiritual unity and rockin' good times. Instead of merely singing "I Shot the Sheriff," Marley dramatized the song's outlaw-on-the-run story line with a pistol-pointing pantomime highlighted by his lithe, catlike dancing and vigorous bounce of his thick, shoulder-length dreadlocks. Climaxing the show with a hard, heavy twenty-minute encore medley of "Get Up, Stand Up," "No More Trouble" and "War," Marley and his background choir, the I-Threes, led the audience into a trance-inducing chant -- "Woi-yo-yo-yo!" -- that continued long after the Wailers had left the stage.
Many Wailers authorities consider the 1976 Roxy show to be the single greatest performance Marley and the band ever gave. It was also a major turning point in their worldwide reggae crusade. Marley's Rastaman Vibration album was already in the Top Twenty when the Wailers pulled into the Roxy. But keyboard player Tyrone Downie says that "when we saw that we got over to the L.A. audience -- which was small, to be sure, but influential -- we knew it was right. We felt that if these people think you're worth shit, then you are."
"Bob knew he was gaining momentum," adds Neville Garrick, Marley's art director for many years. "But he also knew that on this night his contemporaries were celebrating him. These people that he admired for years were returning that admiration."
Communication was paramount to Bob Marley as a songwriter and performer. His third-world music and one-world message were inseparable, and the ecstatic response that greeted him along every stop of the '76 Rastaman Vibration tour showed Marley that mainstream rock audiences were finally reading him loud and clear. His mission, unfortunately, was ever completed. Bob Marley died of cancer on May 11th, 1981, just five years after his triumphant Roxy appearance.
"He really believed in reggae as news," says Island Records chairman Chris Blackwell, who signed Marley in 1972. "He thought of reggae as a musical news sheet. Touring and playing to the people was a way of getting his message across."
Marley, in fact, was very stage shy, according to both Tyrone Downie and Neville Garrick. "He was from a small island, playing something completely different," Downie says. "He looked different, talked different. He could never know he was getting through, and that would affect how relaxed he was onstage. Sometimes he would hide behind his guitar all night."
But on a good night, Garrick says, "he became a different person. He had faith in his music and his message, and that gave him the confidence to go out and do what he had to do."
The May 26th Roxy show was one of those nights. There's a story that backstage before the show Marley informed the Wailers that Bob Dylan, one of his biggest heroes, was in the audience. If there were any screw-ups onstage, he half jokingly declared, everybody would be fired.
"No!" Downie says, laughing. "It's a great story. But Bob didn't have to say that. Everybody realized it had to be good. The one thing with Bob was he always gave off this vibe, this energy, that said, 'This is serious for me, don't fuck with it. This is the most important thing in my life.'"
